Necrology

William Stewart Lambdin '48

Feb. 26, 1925-May. 9, 2022

William Stewart Lambdin ’48, P’73,’83 died on May 9, 2022, in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. Born in Baltimore on Feb. 26, 1925, he was raised in nearby Frederick. 

His path to the Hill was somewhat circuitous. After graduating from Frederick High School in 1942, Bill began his studies at Johns Hopkins University in an accelerated program of the sort many colleges and universities (Hamilton included) established during World War II as part of the war effort. In 1943, now with sophomore standing, he joined the Army Air Corps to study meteorology, but a surplus of trained meteorologists led to his transfer to the Royal Canadian Air Force base in Clinton, Ontario, to study electronics. From there, he was transferred to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to participate in a select program in radar. In both locations, he accumulated college credits. After MIT, he became a radar instructor at, among other military installations, Fort Dix in New Jersey and Shaw Air Force Base in Sumter, S.C. 

In 1945, Bill attended a social gathering at a Lutheran church in Frederick where he met Elizabeth “Betty” Van Fossen. While they had both attended the same high school, they were a year apart and did not really know one another. But the church social began a period of courtship that culminated on Dec. 22, 1947, when the two of them were married in Frederick. Their honeymoon in New York City was unexpectedly extended when a blizzard dumped 26 inches of snow on the city and closed everything down. They had three children. Betty died in 2011.

Bill entered Hamilton in 1946 and majored both in physics and mathematics. A baritone, he sang in the College Choir and was for a time a member of the Squires Club, an association that would cease after his marriage to Betty. Bill achieved a distinguished academic record at Hamilton. Following his junior year, he was awarded the Tompkins Prize in Mathematics and, as a senior, the Edward Huntington Memorial Prize Scholarship in the same discipline. He was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and was valedictorian of his class.

Degree in hand, Bill was hired by Bendix Radio in Towson, Md., as a junior engineer in radar development. By 1959, he rose to chief engineer of the Air Traffic Control Radar Department, but that year he left Bendix to assume the same position at Electronic Devices in Amsterdam, N.Y. He and Betty made their home in nearby Gloversville. 

In 1963, after the company was sold to the Singer Corp., Bill was one of 12 Electronic Devices employees who founded a new company to be called Electro-Metrics, also in Amsterdam. Even as they were preparing a stock offering to launch this venture, they were approached by Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corp. to become a subsidiary. Electro-Metrics began doing business in November 1963, building specialized equipment to measure electromagnetic interference. 

Bill was its general manager from its start until he retired in 1985. In that role, he traveled to Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Russia both to make presentations and to teach courses. He was also a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, which provided a setting to report on his research, and he was also co-author of Electromagnetic Interference Test Methodology and Procedures, Volume 6., “a winning title,” he later told his daughter with a hint of irony. 

Bill was a man of faith. He was an ordained elder at the First Presbyterian Church of Gloversville and sang in its choir. He studied the teachings of Edgar Cayce, the Armenian philosopher and mystic, as well as those of George Gurdjieff and the Indonesian interfaith spiritual movement known as Subud. Ernest Holmes’s philosophy, “The Science of Mind,” exerted a lifelong influence on Bill as well.

Bill’s musical tastes were decidedly eclectic. Along with Franz Schubert’s piano compositions, he embraced the works of Scott Joplin and the country tunes of Patsy Cline. He recalled with pleasure “analyzing and enjoying Haydn’s Symphony #97 in Berrian Shute’s class” at Hamilton. A man with a notable sense of humor, Bill was also a cat lover: he never met one he did not like, including Sparky, a rescue that his daughter-in-law Claudia gave him and who accompanied him during the last years of his life.

William S. Lambdin, according to his 40th reunion yearbook, felt Hamilton was “the best possible launching pad for the rest of my life.” He was predeceased by his wife and older son, William W. Lambdin ’73. He is survived by his daughter, younger son, Thomas E. Lambdin ’83, and two granddaughters.

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